ur Readers — and Steve Ballmer — Think Windows Phone 7 Will Succeed

In a recent poll, we asked whether you thought Windows Phone 7’s chances were in the mobile market.

While other recent Microsoft releases (namely, the Kinect) have seen fabulous sales at launch, Windows Phone 7-powered devices reportedly limped in with just 40,000 units sold during the OS’ first day on the market.

At a shareholder meeting today, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was enthusiastically specific about Kinect’s sales and goals, but he became much more general when discussing the company’s latest mobile OS, saying that Windows Phone 7 was “off to a great start… It marks the beginning, we think, of a new era in smart phones. The response has been really fantastic.”

Whether that “response” refers to actual sales numbers we haven’t yet seen or rather to the general feeling of consumers toward Windows Phone 7 devices isn’t clear.

What is clear, however, is that most Mashable readers don’t have overwhelmingly negative opinions of the Windows Phone 7 operating system.

Almost 43% of respondents said they thought Windows Phone 7 would succeed for one reason or another, versus 37.4% who said they thought the OS would fail.

While some of our poll respondents said that Microsoft had lost its touch when it came to mobile OSes, many more of you said that Windows Phone 7 would succeed because it’s simply a good product. In fact, out of all possible responses, this one got the most votes:

And of those who thought Windows Phone 7 would be a success, a full 85.5% said that success would be on the strength of the product itself rather than marketing or other causes.

For those who thought the OS wouldn’t do well, the majority said that Windows can’t match the strength of its dominant competitors, iOS and Android.

Of course, a large group of respondents correctly said that it’s probably too soon to tell exactly how Windows Phone 7 will perform in the long run:

What do you make of these poll results — and of Windows Phone 7 — so far? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.